


I stand in your shade and smile

by twentyfourblackbirds



Category: Inception (2010), Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Inception, Angst, Crossover, Identity, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Self-Destruction, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-04
Updated: 2015-04-04
Packaged: 2018-03-21 07:00:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3682446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twentyfourblackbirds/pseuds/twentyfourblackbirds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What, a man can’t follow his protégé around, evaluating his progress?” The tone is just a hair too flippant, and it sets Eggsy’s teeth on edge.</p><p>“No, they can’t, Harry, it’s widely considered to be what’s called ‘creepy as fuck’,” Eggsy hisses. Something makes him add, petulantly, “I’m not a child, I can carry out missions without your help.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	I stand in your shade and smile

**Author's Note:**

> This is _not_ set in the same storyline/universe as my other Kingsman/Inception piece. My current guilty pleasure is in shamelessly exploring multiple different takes and vignettes on the fusion.

Eggsy sees him of the corner of his eye and his heart comes to a standstill. He stops what he was doing, which was running a languorous hand up the leg of his mark.

“Excuse me for just a moment,” he whispers luxuriously into her ear. “I should refresh our drinks.”

He folds up his napkin meticulously before placing it back on the table, because he was trained only by the very best in the mannerisms of a gentleman. Then he leaves his simpering guest and heads straight to the bar.

He signals to the bartender before speaking, never once looking at the man standing casually not a metre away from him. “Harry,” he murmurs, “What are you doing here?”

Harry takes a refined draught from his gin and tonic before answering. The overhead lights flash in his glasses as he turns to smile at Eggsy.

“What, a man can’t follow his protégé around, evaluating his progress?” The tone is just a hair too flippant, and it sets Eggsy’s teeth on edge.

“No, they can’t, Harry, it’s widely considered to be what’s called ‘creepy as fuck’,” Eggsy hisses. Something makes him add, petulantly, “I’m not a child, I can carry out missions without your help.”

“So it seems,” Harry said, raising his glass in the air and winking. Back at the table, the mark blushes cherry red and waves shyly at them. Eggsy looks over his shoulder, pastes on a charming smile and gracefully grabs a drink in each hand.

“Bugger off, Harry,” he says in a low, savage voice before departing.

He must have listened, for once, because he’s gone the next time Eggsy looks up from his systematic seduction of the mark.

They escape upstairs to a hotel room, where they make reckless love, and afterwards reckless pillow talk, in which he deftly procures the intel he was after. She dozes off with a smile that Eggsy kisses with a trace of tenderness. Then he throws himself off the hotel balcony.

He awakes into reality with a jerk, and starts ripping the IV tubes from his arm and packing up the PASIV. Naturally, there’s absolutely no trace of Harry anywhere in the room.

\----

He studiously delivers his report back to Merlin at headquarters.

“Everything go smoothly?” Merlin asks, not bothering to look up from his tablet.

“Without a hitch,” Eggsy lies.

\----

The next time Harry shows up, it’s not on a seduction mission.

Eggsy is feeding a lockpick delicately into the keyhole. His ear is pressed to the surface, straining for the sound of a tumbler clicking into place. So when he instead hears a deeply cultured voice asking, “Need some help with that?” he jerks violently and the lockpick goes flying.

“For fuck’s sake, Harry,” he says, when he can speak again. Harry is looking down at him inquiringly, his hands perfectly poised on his umbrella handle.

Eggsy refuses to look at his once-mentor. “No, Harry, I don’t need your help. Please stop, stop _fussing_. I can handle this. Go away.”

Harry squats down next to him and hands him another tool from his roll. “This one’s better for the job, anyway,” he says. “Also, there’s a patrolling guard that’s due in another,” he shakes his cuff free from his wrist, “three minutes and forty seconds.”

Eggsy breathes in, breathes out. “Thank you,” he says curtly, and goes back to work.

Harry stays next to him the entire time.

\----

He stops arguing the next few times Harry shows up, especially after he gets Eggsy out of a particular tight spot, pointing out an escape hatch in a maze that Eggsy had completely forgotten he’d designed. He does, however, unequivocally kick Harry out of seduction dreamshares. Harry seems to get the hint, because he stops showing up to those after a while.

So, of course, it’s when things are starting to look up that Roxy finds out.

Paired missions were somewhat unusual in the Kingsmen, each agent trained exhaustively to be their own architect, forger, and point man, all rolled into one extremely efficient and deadly pair of hands. However, certain objectives were occasionally deemed important enough to warrant teams.

This particular mission is two levels deep. They’re in a maze-like underground bunker, somehow able to hear the constant pounding and screams of the projections from outside. A charming subconscious, this.

The mark is currently tied and bound to a chair and has so far remained defiantly silent. Both Eggsy and Roxy have their guns trained, unmoving, on his centre mass. Roxy is the one doing the speaking.

“You have until the count of ten,” her voice is detached and cool. “If you don’t tell us what you know, those numbers will be the last thing you hear. Ten. Nine. Eight.” She shoots his right kneecap. “Seven. Six. Five.” She shoots out his left. “Four. Thr-”

“Pardon the interruption,” a voice drifts down from the corridor, and Harry rounds the corner, as casually as if he were strolling down Saville Row for a morning constitutional, “but I’m afraid you won’t get anywhere with that technique.”

Eggsy flinches. Roxy’s face remains expressionless, but her pistol pivots to Harry like a shark scenting blood.

“Lancelot, don’t shoot him out,” Eggsy blurts out. “Let him talk.”

Roxy is absolutely still for a second, before she says, “Go on.”

Harry is circling the prone target like an overly-educated vulture. “This man does not overly mind pain,” he remarks thoughtfully, “therefore crippling him will do nothing to produce the information you desire. If you wish to truly threaten him, you must find the lever of fear, and pull it.”

Harry’s hands come around from behind him, holding a box with holes in it. From inside, something scrabbles. Something else squeaks.

The mark, who hasn’t said a word until now, whimpers.

“No,” he says. Roxy and Eggsy both turn to look at him. “No no no no no no. Anything. Anything but that. Anything, please.”

“You’ll tell us what we want to know?”

“I’ll tell you what you want to know,” he sobs.

Roxy nods at Harry. “Put that away,” she says curtly.

Harry sets the box down on the floor, eliciting another squeak. The chair shudders violently; the man has jerked, trying to get further away.

Without another word, Harry turns on his heels and leaves the room.

\----

“Tell me what the fuck that was,” Roxy demands after the slightly adjusted report to Merlin has been made and they’re alone in Headquarters.

Eggsy can’t look her in the eye as he compulsively runs his thumb over his totem. He’s not dreaming. He’s not dreaming. “What part?”

“The part where there was a _dead man_ on our mission.”

At that, Eggsy flinches again. He’d known the truth all along, but hearing it aloud made it more real, made it worse. “You know it was my projection of — him.”

Roxy doesn’t speak for the longest time. Finally, she says, “How long have you been seeing his shade?”

“Dunno. ’Bout eight missions now, I suppose,” Eggsy says quietly.

She exhales loudly. “Eight. Eight fucking missions. Jesus Christ, Eggsy.”

He holds up a pleading hand. “It ain’t what you think it is. He’s benign, he ain’t interfering. It’s - he’s - helping. He helped us on that mission, didn’t he?”

“Helping! Helping you torture people?”

“No! Fuck off! He’s never - that’s the first time -” Eggsy can’t go on, can’t see Roxy’s expression through the tears blurring his vision.

Roxy goes silent again, but this time she puts an arm around his shoulder, pulls him closer. “You need help, Eggsy,” she says, kindly. Her kindness hurts more than her anger.

Eggsy wipes ineffectively at his face. “I know,” he says.

\----

He first tries to - not trap - _contain_ him.

Harry’s inspecting a china plate in an old veneered armoire. “The paint’s a bit off,” he finally announces. “It was closer to duck egg blue, instead of royal.”

“Oh, sod off,” Eggsy says, exhausted. He leans backward in his chair, doing a visual sweep. He’s spent days learning every aged stain in the dusty hardwood floors of Harry’s house, every crack and crevice in the molding, even - he shudders - every strand of fur on Mr. Pickles.

Harry sets the plate down, plants a kiss on his forehead. “I’m joking, of course,” he says. “It’s perfect. What’s it for?”

Eggsy almost tips over. His skin is tingling where Harry’s lips had left their mark. “It’s a home. For you to stay in.”

Harry only looks at him, comically surprised in his silk red dressing gown and fluffy slippers. “Stay?”

“Yes,” Eggsy whispers, his heart breaking. “Please stay here. You can’t come on missions with me anymore.”

“I see.” Harry is taking this remarkably well. “I will. If you stay with me.” He’s grabbing Eggsy’s collar, pulling him into a real kiss this time.

“Harry, what?” he tries to say.

“Don’t pretend this isn’t what you wanted,” Harry murmurs into his mouth.

Eggsy gives in. There’s only so long you can lie to your own subconscious. “When you think about it though, isn’t this really just another form of masturbation?” his voice is torn, ragged.

“Yes. And?”

And nothing. He leads the way to Harry’s bedroom.

\----

It works, up until the moment it doesn’t.

Eggsy is ducked behind his makeshift barricade, an overturned water trough, picking off projections one by one. An arm holding a gun slides beside him.

“Darling,” says Harry, “you really mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger.”

The shotgun shell comes blasting out of his perfectly steady hands. Twenty metres away, an oil drum explodes.

“Harry,” says Eggsy, unhappily. “You can’t be here.”

“Nonsense,” replies Harry, taking aim once again.

\----

The first mission Eggsy ever fails is the first time he kills Harry.

It’s a seduction mission. The mark is an older man in his fifties. He has gentle eyes and graying hair and frankly terrible taste in clothing. Of all the absurd things, he’s teaching Eggsy how to golf, his gloved hands wrapped warmly around Eggsy’s own.

“Excuse me,” they hear a tight voice. Harry’s standing on the putting green, as incongruous and surreal as a heat wave on a cold day. “Take your hands off him.”

Eggsy’s entire body tenses. “Harry, don’t.”

The mark stops, confused. Every projection in the vicinity turns to look at the frozen tableau.

“Jason, what -” the mark begins to ask, and crumples as Harry lowers the gun. Eggsy screams, “What the _fuck_ , Harry?” The projections are on their feet now, running at breakneck speed towards them.

“He shouldn’t have touched you,” Harry says intensely, as if that explained everything.

“ _Fuck_ you.” Eggsy draws his gun and shoots. He’s crying as Harry’s body hits the grass, his eyes as dead and expressionless as they were in Kentucky.

The projections have reached him by now, and they tear him from limb to limb.

\----

He drugs the mark yet again, then makes his exit. He knows he’s done, he’s compromised, everything he’s done has made everything worse, and he can’t continue to jeopardize Kingsman like this.

He doesn’t bother reporting in or returning to HQ. He texts Merlin a short message, throws the phone into the toilet tank of a nearby McDonald’s, and catches a taxi to the airport.

His training makes him an expert in evading pursuit. One day he’s Maurice Bendrix, itinerant Finnish author, another day he’s a mango seller in Madagascar. He sleeps as little as possible, and drugs himself whenever he has to. He lets his beard grow out. He deletes the messages from Merlin and Roxy in his dead drops without ever opening them. He throws his totem into a geyser in Yellowstone.

Finally, his feet find him underneath an opium den in Tel Aviv.

The wizened old man at the door glances at him. In that look, his soul is laid bare. I know everything about you that matters, says that gaze. I don't know your name or where you were born, but I know how you will die, and I know exactly why you’re here.

Wordlessly, money exchanges hands. The man leads him to an empty cot in a sea of motionless bodies. It’s filthy, and he doesn’t care.

“How long?”  
  
“Forever,” he says.

\----

He’s young again, he’s clean-shaven, his Oxfords are stiff and shining and his suit is being immaculately undone by Harry, button by button.

They kill projections and they fuck, they fuck and they kill projections, everything timeless and tinged with glory. Whenever he grows tired of the world he’s dreamed up for him and Harry, he’ll shoot himself up a level and start over again.

In one level, they’re world-class spies without the dreamshares. He saves the world from a ludicrously-dressed villain obsessed with global warming. In the next, Harry’s an English professor having an illicit affair with Eggsy, his student. In a few others, Eggsy lets Harry be a brilliant if snooty consulting detective, while he’s the smart-mouthed sidekick. They run around solving crime and Eggsy laughs himself hoarse after each case.

In another, he tries reconstructing what his life might have been if he hadn't been such a fuck-up. If he’d stuck with gymnastics, if he’d stayed in the Marines. The answer is apparently that he never really meets Harry, except in passing on the streets.

He shoots himself out of that dream in less than a week.

After a while, Eggsy tires of hair-raising adventures and cheap thrills. He thinks he might try out domesticity for a change. So, having very little other frame of reference, he naturally steals the plot of _My Fair Lady_. He makes Harry an upper-class owner of a clothes shop who rescues Eggsy from the gutter, trains him as an apprentice, and eventually, of course, falls in love with him.

Five years after the dream should have ended, after the first night they make love, he wakes up next to Harry, who’s kicked all the blankets off his side of the bed, and realizes he has yet to become bored. 

Ten years after that, Harry sells the shop and they retire within London. The fire of forbidden love has long been replaced by the warm hearth of contentment. And Eggsy's fingers still aren't reaching for the reset button - they're running through Harry's hair and straightening his ties for him for the thousandth time.

Eventually, he knows, they will both grow too old. He’ll have to shoot himself and start all over again. He’s waiting on a train, a train that's looping endlessly around a circular track. He knows exactly where this train will take him: right back to where he began. But it doesn't matter. How can it not matter to him that the train is going nowhere?

 _Because_ , he answers himself, _we’ll be together_.

\----

He’s watching the telly one day, feet up on the couch. It’s some horribly insubstantial rubbish, but he can’t be arsed to get up and turn it off. Turns out when you hit a certain age, bliss is a soft surface and a warm duvet.

He hears someone walk into the room. “Could you flip the telly off for me, Harry?” he drowsily requests.

There’s a pause. The floor creaks with footsteps, and the babble ceases. “Thanks, love,” he murmurs warmly.

He’s already half-asleep when Harry’s voice says, “Eggsy.”

His eyes fly open, but his spectacles are perched on the top of his head. He peers rheumatically at the indistinct figure in the middle of the living room even though he doesn’t have to. The voice had told him already everything he didn't want to know.

Is it irony or is it cruelty when the voice you’ve been longing to hear your whole life is not the voice that belongs in your dreams?

Eggsy tries in vain to speak. The words feel heavy on his tongue; they won't come out, and when they do they drop from his lips like lead.

“So either my subconscious has yet again found a new way to fuck me over,” he says tonelessly, “or you’re a dead man who’s tracked me across the world and invaded my deepest dreams.”

Harry says nothing.

Eggsy is weak and always has been weak when it comes to Harry. Slowly, hating himself with every second it takes him to do so, he pulls his glasses down to his nose. A face swims into focus, no more than a few years older than the last time Eggsy saw him alive.

He feels his heart unconstrict, as if it’s only just started beating again.

“Make a leap of faith,” he hears Harry say. “Come with me and find out.”

Eggsy takes his outstretched hand.

 


End file.
